Pay a second salary to an ex-employee to keep him from airing grievances ?????

Are you serious?  LMAO  That's the funnies thing I've ever heard.

Shafer needs to "defend" nothing but his own ass.  He is now working for his former company's competitor and it is in his best interest to do just that.

If you really need to learn about what happened to Steam's Sid V, then go to 2kForums and post your inquiries there.  Oh and good luck with that.

-.-

So that this doesn't become an ongoing distraction...

As part of a public company, 2K has a policy where only certain individuals are permitted to talk about the company and its games in public. The only exceptions to this are for special events, like trade show interviews. Everyone employed by 2K is beholden to this policy, and it does not expire after someone departs the company, regardless of the circumstances. Some people don't always abide by this, but that's on them.

I'll be happy to discuss what projects I'm working on at Stardock as they're announced, what my thoughts are on various topics and why I made certain decisions, but you won't see me talking about games I've worked on prior to me joining Stardock.

Jon

Soon... very soon...

Jon

Mr Shafer!!!  Hey!!  Cool avatar!  lol  Very fitting indeed.

Thanks for joining in on the conversations.  Really.  The devs involvement in this regard is vital and is one of the reasons why I prefer to purchase anything digital via Stardock Corp.

So thanks!!!!

Glad to hear that.

I'm happy you are here to make Elemental better.

I'm curious about your position. You are here to increase the modding capacity of Elemental. Will you be making a sample mod to show it off in all it's glory? I think that'd be pretty cool.

I respect your decision to not want to defame your former employer, you better than anyone know the rhetoric flying around on the internet about your involvement with Civ 5. I am sure your a nice guy and we have all been in over our head, or not supported with a proper budget or team, and various things that cause problems for anyone doing jobs and projects. I truly hope you, Kael and Brad succeed with Elemental.

That being said  a choice to honor a prior companies policy is just that its a choice not a contract. And the result of that is people will draw their own conclusion based upon information they can obtain. Maybe you know those conclusions are wrong. But you and Brad and everyone needs to stop telling us how wrong we all are (I have read pretty much all the threads) if your unwilling to give us accurate information. There are consequences to choices you can't have it both ways, this is an unfortunate reality of life for everyone in almost every choice a person makes.

I am just going to guess but maybe you know you made some bad design decisions on Civ 5. I don't think thats that big of a deal, personally hexes and 1upt inmho were great decisions that with a little more AI work would give it that classic panzer general type wargame feel. But some of the others well ..

Anyways what I am getting at is maybe this is a second chance for you and I hope that whatever huberis or ego you may have acquired in this industry is tempered and maybe youll go play some more of the classic tbs games, some of the newer highly invoative board games, and maybe incorporate more ideas and hard playtesting into Elemental to make it the game we all want.

From the information I have gleaned I think your an extremly hard worker (heard you got onto the dev team at firaxis by documenting the code base) and I hope the best for you in your new job (which you should be thankful to have in this economy.

Jam3 is just making a whole lot of assumptions about something he knows nothing about....which is not reflective of any nationality.

Even with Mr Shafer's recent informative comment, he still continues to dish out the jabs...lol.  Poor guy.

If I could get him a Happy Meal (tm), I would.

-.-

   Hammering a dead cat - one step beyond beating a dead horse. Someone call the SPCA. 

I like this: 

But we would need one in style with the ones we already have.

Yeah because everyone in here has never said anything bad about a former employer. And you would be laughed out of court if you filed a civil suit versus an ex-employee you didn't have a contract with, thats the entire point of contracts.  And since we don;t know what happened with Civ or with the conversation between Brad and Jon that lead to a decision to hire were not beating a dead horse were running around like chickens with our heads cut off because we don;t have any good information, which was basically my entire point.

We DO know what happened with 'civ'.  The Civ franchise is now on [facebook]...seeking to recruit new young blood...since Firaxis/2k shafted most current civ fans.

The conversation between Shafer and Wardell was one of a business deal which is intended to ultimately provide you (and me and rest of Stardock fans) with unlimited entertainment value for a considerable amount of time from here forward.....so it is best that you get on with enjoying it.

-.-

Soooo... yeah, I liked Civ4 more than Civ5.

Aaaaand, seeing what I read, the initial state of Elemental was so flawed, I would have liked Civ5 better than that.

AAaaand I just got into playing elemental and its fun, after I got my head around it.

Just needs polish. And diversity. And upgrades.

So stardock hiring Jon Shafer for polish, diversity and upgrades is cool. So with this, my 3rd post or something, I'd like to welcome him too!

*ahem*

Welcome!

So, poor OP person - tearing your hair out yet?

This was supposed to be a nice welcome thread as opposed to that 'other' thread.

Ah well, welcome aboard, 'nuff said.